


In The Shadows

by winteredspark



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mentions of Harry/Ginny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-02 21:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14553642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winteredspark/pseuds/winteredspark
Summary: "What does he want from you?" "Everything." / At night, unable to sleep, Ginny and Draco roam the halls.





	In The Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends!
> 
> I've always been fascinated by what Ginny Weasley went through at the hands of Tom Riddle and how it would impact her formative years. While Draco's involvement with Voldemort isn't the same as Ginny's, there remain similarities. Draco, while not the most pleasant person to be around, is nevertheless portrayed as a child growing up with the assumption he will side with Voldemort. One could argue that he could've easily picked another safer option, and perhaps he could've. 
> 
> Regardless, when I consider these two characters I find similarities in their experiences and I've always wished that they interacted more in canon. I also think they'd have an interesting dynamic. So this story is an attempt to 1) get my feels out, and 2) explore how two students connected by similar traumas would interact. It's not a perfect, fleshed out story, and it's not meant to be. I hope you enjoy.

She dreams of being young again, traipsing along her older siblings in secondhand robes and noticing the way people avert their eyes. They might not all be as forthcoming as the Malfoy family with their opinions, but they don’t have to be. Their beady eyes, glancing over the tears in her clothes and the soot on her face before looking quickly away, say enough.

The dreams take on a slightly different shape now. She’s still young. Sewer water drips from messy hair and pools at her feet. People are looking just as they always do, only this time they’re whispering: _He’s back because of you, the one who communes with snakes._

Ginny has never told anyone how much it hurt to watch Harry destroy his journal. Despite the fact that she’d awoken in the Chamber of Secrets, some part of her had still been connected to the journal and, by extension, Tom. Each plunge of the basilisk’s fang had sent pain sliding along in the veins in her body right up until Tom’s presence had retreated from her mind and left her alone for the first time in months.

Years later, Ginny wakes up panting in her dorm, memories still playing themselves out in the air in front of her: Tom’s hands digging painfully into her shoulders as he laughs and laughs.

So she walks, threads her way along the castle corridors and the grounds.

Over the years Ginny has learned to keep hold of the Marauder’s Map whenever her friends aren’t in need. She doesn’t use it as much now but she had in the beginning, memorizing the route her various professors would take throughout the night. It hadn’t been difficult to convince Harry that he ought to hand it over. She’s not blind to the way he looks at her nor to the electricity that dances along her spine whenever he touches her. One day she supposes everything will fall into place, but that day is not now. Now is for walking.

During one of her late night rendezvous, Ginny finds him.

His hair catches the light, a shock of platinum blonde against the stone wall behind him. He glances up at Ginny’s approach and the questions on her tongue die. The skin under his eyes is mottled purple from exhaustion, eyes themselves sunken deep into their sockets. The sleep shirt he’s wearing does nothing to hide the distinctive mark on his forearm.

Perhaps it should come as a surprise, knowing what he’s become. Somehow, with the memories of Tom’s manipulation fresh on Ginny’s mind, it’s not.

Ginny slides down the wall and cups her fingers lightly over Draco Malfoy’s arm just above the Dark Mark.

 

* * *

 

They never plan to meet, or maybe they do. They quickly learn the other’s favorite hiding places and most nights Ginny stumbles upon him already waiting.

There’s never any admittance to this waiting, of course, just a weary glance in a face tipped back to meet hers that says _about time you got here_.

Sometimes they touch, a hand along her shoulder or fingers stroking his, and sometimes they don’t.

Ginny doesn’t linger over it during her days, nor does she go out of her way to scan the Slytherin table during meals. She’s far too preoccupied with classes and their visits in empty corridors have a dreamlike quality which makes them easy to dismiss as fantasy. Perhaps it’s the way they never talk, really, just keep each other company until the demons plaguing them have fled for the time being.

 

* * *

 

Ginny finds herself drifting off in her Astronomy class without realizing. After the third suspicious glance from her professor, she straightens herself in her seat and bids herself _do better_.

Her notes, half smudged by the side of her hand earlier, are entirely illegible. Ginny blinks and the words swim for a moment, blood-red and cast into shadow by a giant torch next to them.

She stumbles out of the class the moment it’s over and heads for the safety of an empty corridor. A hand slides around her waist and Ginny pivots, half expecting the familiar figure from her dreams, but it’s only Harry. He squeezes her a little, mutters, “You’re alright?”

Ginny catalogues the worry in his gaze, softening a bit with the knowledge that he cares.

“Could use a good nap,” she admits with a yawn.

Harry nods and his lips brush softly across her cheek. It’s the first time he’s done something like that. “Do you need me to walk you there?”

He’s dressed in Quidditch robes, probably already late for a practice. Ginny smiles reassuringly at him, cheek tingling, and says, “I’ll be fine, but you have somewhere to be.”

She collapses face first onto her bed in the dorms and wakes up three hours later, haunted by the image of her hands and forearms covered in sticky blood as she writes Tom’s message on a wall.

 

* * *

 

He’s already waiting when Ginny arrives, face wet with tears and arms resting on his raised knees. She doesn’t tell her companion that this is the third place she’s checked, just takes her place by his side and listens to Draco choke back the noises in the back of his throat.

Ginny knows those noises, the bitter animalistic ones which often accompany particularly bad memories, but it’s curious hearing them come from another person.

Her fingers clamp around his forearm and he sighs, a long drawn out sound.

"Do you ever look back?” he asks at last, barely audible.

“No,” she says, because she doesn’t.

“Ah.” He nods, head falling between his legs.

“There’s no point,” Ginny continues, not sure what she’s planning on saying but thinking he ought to hear it anyways. “He finds me in my dreams.”

Draco doesn’t need to ask what she means. It was his father, after all, who dropped Tom Riddle’s diary into Ginny’s bag all those years ago. If he didn’t know then, someone told him along the way.

Glancing up at her, Draco makes another one of those wounded sounds.

A thought races through Ginny’s mind, burning bright as a wildfire.

_I want to swallow that noise out of your throat._

She leans forward, hands reaching up to grasp gently at the sides of Draco’s face. He doesn’t move at first, watching as Ginny draws herself closer to him. She waits for a sound of disapproval but hears none. His mouth opens under hers immediately and he starts to make the terrible sound again, only this time Ginny swallows it into herself.

She waits for the same tingling sensation inflicted by Harry’s kiss but it’s not to be found here. Here Ginny is burning, hair blanketing her shoulders as Draco grasps at her sleep shirt, dragging her half on top of him until she can feel the shudders running through his body.

For a few minutes, Ginny allows herself to become lost under the pressure of Draco’s mouth and the flashes of heat his fingers leave against her skin. When she pulls back, his lips are beautifully swollen, his hair a knotted mess.

"What does he want from you?” she breathes, chest heaving against his. One hand grasps for his forearm, pressing insistently against the Mark.

Draco looks at her for a long moment, eyes bright and clear. He doesn’t flinch at the movement of her fingers.

“Everything,” he says at last, as if it’s that simple, and drags her mouth back to his.

 

* * *

 

Dumbledore falls and Ginny remembers burning, remembers the desperate noise coming from Draco’s mouth. She can feel it now, trapped against her rib cage, fluttering for release.

What does he want from you?  

 _Everything_.

 


End file.
